One of the many ways in which broadcast networks have started to resemble their cable counterparts is in the structure of a series season.  For years, cable has aired its shows, especially serialized series, in clearly-defined, repeat-free mini-seasons, with different programming in those slots during hiatus periods, rather than following the historical broadcast model […]

  In the post-Homeland era of Showtime, SHAMELESS, the network’s Parenthood on crack, has been pushed even farther to the background–and to be sure, the two shows aren’t comparable in terms of seriousness of purpose or blazing quality.  Nor does Shameless have the tabloid zing of Dexter‘s plots.  Nevertheless, apart from being a steady, reliable performer […]

  THE MINDY PROJECT has spent much of its first season shambling toward what kind of show it wants to be, but its struggles have become progressively more entertaining to watch. Mindy started with an enormous amount of good will, thanks to its creator/star Mindy Kaling, the terrifically talented writer, comic and co-star of The […]

  No show enjoys running around in circles more than VEEP.  Armando Ianucci’s political sitcom glories in Vice-President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her staff of venal incompetents mistakenly navigating through 180, 360 and often 720 or more degrees of spin every week, usually managing to slam into whatever iceberg they’ve most been trying to […]

  Although Starz was a co-financier of THE WHITE QUEEN, the show was produced by the BBC predominantly for a British audience, so it helped to have a working (or at least a Wikipedia) knowledge of 15th-century English history to get the most out of it.  For example, it would have been difficult to appreciate […]

  THE FOSTERS seemed sturdier in the first half of its season than in its second.  Series creators Brad Bredeweg and Peter Paige loaded up so strenuously on sudsy, often ham-handed melodrama that it’s threatened to extinguish the fine little character moments that originally distinguished the series.  Tonight’s season finale had more of the same–and […]

  AGENTS OF SHIELD was unquestionably a better show at the end of this season than it was when it arrived, but it still has plenty of work to do.  SHIELD arrived on the air with almost impossible expectations.  It was, however unfairly, inevitably going to be compared to the mega-budgeted superhero spectacles with which […]

  If nothing else, this first half of 2014 has been marked as The Year of Eva Green.  Green will probably never be a mainstream Hollywood star–there’s something too feral and broken about her for wide audiences to be comfortable in her presence–but in 300:  Rise Of An Empire and in Showtime’s PENNY DREADFUL, she’s […]